1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to printing apparatuses, printing methods, storage media, and printing systems.
2. Related Art
Inkjet printers are known as printing apparatuses that carry out printing on media. The inkjet printers are provided with nozzles for ejecting ink, and carry out printing by ejecting ink toward media while carrying the media. The nozzles are each provided with an element for performing an ink ejecting operation for ejecting ink. The elements are constituted by piezoelectric elements, for example, and perform an ink ejecting operation when the elements are driven according to a drive signal that is input from the outside. The inkjet printers are provided with a drive signal outputting section by which the drive signal is output and supplied to the elements.
However, there are cases in which the temperature of the drive signal outputting section becomes high due to generation of heat when the inkjet printer performs a printing process in succession. When the drive signal outputting section enters this high-temperature state in this manner, there is a possibility that the elements are destroyed and thus drive signals are not properly output. When drive signals are not properly output from the drive signal outputting section in this manner, it may become impossible to perform the printing process.
Based on the above points, in order not to let the drive signal outputting section have high temperature, techniques have been proposed for cooling down the drive signal outputting section by halting the printing process every time the printing process of the inkjet printer ends on a predetermined area (see JP-A-2003-72058).
However, the above-described method, in which the drive signal outputting section is cooled down in this manner by halting the printing process every time the printing process of the inkjet printer ends on a predetermined area, has the following problem. When the temperature at the drive signal outputting section is very high, it is necessary that the printing process is halted for a long time every time the printing process of the inkjet printer ends on a predetermined area, and thus there is a possibility that a user mistakes that the inkjet printer is out of order. Furthermore, when the printing process is halted for a long time every time the printing process of the inkjet printer ends on a predetermined area, ink is solidified in the vicinity of ejection openings of the nozzles, and thus an ejection failure such as clogging in the nozzles may occur. Based on the above points, a very small drive signal is output from the drive signal outputting section to the elements such that the elements are vibrated to an extent that ink is not ejected from the nozzles, to prevent the ink from being solidified. However, when ink is prevented from being solidified in this manner, a drive signal is output from the drive signal outputting section, and thus the drive signal outputting section generates heat and the effect of lowering the temperature may be reduced.